The US Department of Commerce yesterday said it plans to award SK Hynix Inc up to US$450 million in grants to help fund an advanced packaging plant and research and development (R&D) facility for artificial intelligence (AI) products in Indiana.
In April, SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memorychip maker, said it would invest about US$3.87 billion to build the facility in West Lafayette, Indiana.
The facility would include an advanced chip production line to mass-produce next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, currently used in graphic processing units that train AI systems, the Nvidia Corp supplier said.
Photo: Bloomberg
The commerce department also plans to make available US$500 million in government loans for the SK Hynix project, which is expected to qualify for a 25 percent investment tax credit.
The memory packaging plant for AI products and an advanced packaging R&D facility would create 1,000 jobs and fill a key gap in the US semiconductor supply chain, the department said.
The US Congress in August 2022 approved a US$39 billion subsidy program for US semiconductor manufacturing and related components along with US$75 billion in government lending authority.
US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said that the department has announced term sheets with 15 companies offering about US$30 billion in funding that “will unlock another US$300 billion of private capital.”
The US has major commitments from all five major leading-edge semiconductor chip manufacturers — Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Intel Corp, Samsung Electronics Co, Micron Technology Inc and SK Hynix.
“It means we in the United States will have the most secure and diverse supply chain in the world for the advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence,” Raimondo told reporters.
No other economy in the world “has more than two of these companies producing leading-edge chips on its shores,” the department added.
SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung said in a statement that the company deeply appreciates “the US Department of Commerce’s support and is excited to collaborate in seeing this transformational project fully realized.”
The department in May said it planned to award US$75 million to Absolics Inc for constructing a facility in Georgia to supply advanced materials to the country’s semiconductor industry.
The planned award is to an affiliate of SKC Co, which in turn is part of South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate SK Group, as is SK Hynix.
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